SAMIR
AMIN(3 September 1931 – 12 August
2018)
World acclaimed Marxist thinker Samir
Amin dies
World acclaimed Egyptian econimist and thinker, Samir Amin, has died on
Sunday in Paris. He was 86.
SAMIR AMIN was one of the world’s greatest
radical thinkers. At least for the last five decades, he has been a great
source of inspiration for those who dream of an alternative and better world. A
Marxist thinker of profound originality and theoretical innovation, Amin
continues to intellectually equip us to comprehend, analyse and critique the
“obsolete” nature of present-day capitalism, the unequal North-South divide
between countries, the continued operation of imperialism, the status quoist
ideologies of capitalism, etc.
Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1931. He
pursued his higher education at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris
(“Sciences Po”), receiving his diploma in 1952. He obtained his PhD on “The
origins of underdevelopment—capitalist accumulation on a world scale” in 1957
at the Sorbonne in Paris and a diploma in mathematical statistics from
L’institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques. Amin worked in
the planning agency of Egypt from 1957 to 1960, until the Gamal Abdel Nasser
regime’s persecution of communists forced him to leave. From 1960 to1963, he
was attached to the Ministry of Planning in Mali. After becoming a full
professor in France in 1966, Amin chose to teach in Paris-Vincennes and Dakar,
Senegal, where he has been based for over 40 years. He has been the director of
Third World Forum since 1980 and the Chair of the World Forum for Alternatives
since 1997.
As a Marxist based in the South or what is
called the “Third World”, Amin began his intellectual explorations by analysing
the “development of underdevelopment” in Third World countries under
capitalism. He attributes this pattern of development to capitalism. According
to Amin, the world economy under capitalism functions in a hierarchical,
unequal and exploitative way where the “First World” countries of the North
dominate and develop at the cost of the pauperisation of the Third World
countries of the South.
For Amin, this pattern of capitalist
development always necessitates the countries of the North resorting to the
mechanism of imperialist control of the South. “Imperialism is not a stage, not
even the highest stage of capitalism. It is inherent in capitalism’s
expansion,” argues Amin. He calls contemporary imperialism the “imperialism of
the triad” and argues that this imperialism pauperises and victimises the
people in the Global South. Through this theoretical proposition, he rejects
the argument that imperialism in the world scene is now muted and what we have
now is “empire”.
As a pioneer of dependency theory, from the
1970s, Amin has shown with great acumen how resource flow from the countries of
the periphery enriches the core countries of the North. He calls the surplus
expropriation from the periphery “imperialist rent”. He believes that this
imperialist exploitation of the South paved the way for and caused the
emergence of liberation struggles in the South in the 20th century, and he
hopes for a repeat of the same in the monopoly finance capital of the 21st
century also.
This phase of monopoly finance capital of the
contemporary era came on to the scene in the 1970s. According to him, this
financialisation arises as a counter to the stagnation and accumulation
tendency of capitalism. Amin explains that from 1971 the world capitalist
system has entered into another long crisis, probably the last as capitalism
has reached a dead end. According to him, in its long history, capitalism has
had two long crises: first from 1871 to 1945, and the second crisis began in
1971 and we are living in this period. His conclusion and warning to the world
is that capitalism has become an “obsolete social system”.
It is this material condition and concrete
situation of the obsolete stage in which capitalism reached that demands and
keeps alive the necessities of socialism as a choice before humanity. Amin
declares that if we are to come out in the end from this “long tunnel’’, it
will be into socialism, a society aimed at transcending “the legacy of unequal
development inherent to capitalism” by offering to “all human beings on the
planet a better mastery of their social development”.
Amin is the author of a number of books on
different themes, including political economy, socialism, political Islam, and
culture. Eurocentrism, published in 1988, is a path-breaking work
by him. “Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which
narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman
classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin
presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasises the crucial historical
role played by the Arab Islamic world.” Eurocentrism remains a
classic in critical studies and scholarship. Amin’s other important books
include The Liberal Virus (2004), The Implosion of
Contemporary Capitalism (2013), The Law of World Wide Value (2010)
and Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism (2010).
RED SALUTE.
